#OpCanary & #OpAfrica Comeback

The campaigns seek to highlight abuses committed by corporations with and without government collusion.

The #OpCanary and #OpAfrica Anonymous campaigns, which had been dormant for some time, sparked into life recently with hacks of the Ugandan Ministry of Finance, a Rwandan government controlled IT company, a Tanzanian Telco and a South African jobs portal.

The campaigns target corporations engaged in the use of child labour, human rights violations and corruption. #OpCanary targets multinational corporations with the #OpAfrica component focussing on African entities. The campaigns seek to highlight abuses committed by corporations with and without government collusion.

Essar has been accused of human rights abuses, is caught in a government corruption probe in India and is also being investigated for massive tax evasion using offshore shell companies, amongst other notable activities.

Mass-Hack of Angolan Government Sites

In a separate hack, Portuguese hackers targeted twenty Angolan government websites in response to the jail sentences given to members of a Luanda-based book club.

In total, seventeen Angolan activists were sentenced to between 2 and 8 ½ years on charges of plotting a “rebellion” against the government – for simply reading a book.

In response to the outrageous sentences Amnesty International said the matter was “an affront to justice,” and pressed for the immediate release of the activists

Amnesty spokesperson Deprose Muchena said “Angolan authorities use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views. The activists have been wrongly convicted in a deeply politicised trial. They are the victims of a government determined to intimidate anyone who dares to question its repressive policies.”